Oxy

What was Sedar looking at anyway? 2 outs with Cliff Lee on the mound, with a no arm left fielder out there. At the very least he should be half way down the third base line to see where the throw comes in from left center. As it was, it was a terrible throw, so Braun should have been going. It was a good time to be aggressive.

So I'm starting to come around on Gomez. He's looked awfully good out there. His defense has never been questioned, but he's been putting the ball in play a lot more recently as well. Taking third base there in the first directly gave us a run.

Who is Danny Espinosa? I don't like him.

Matt Stairs. just seems like bad news.

Every once in awhile Braun makes an outstanding play. Perfectly positioned on that ricochet off the wall and then a perfect throw to beat the guy by 12 feet. Then the next inning he'll take a banana route to the ball, over-run it, and let it glance off his glove. Frustrating, but at least he is capable of making great plays, anyway.

Wanna rethink that statement now? Ja. He's getting rocked now.

A line of 7.2 ERA, 1.4 WHIP is pretty crummy. Maybe he'll hold them in check for one or two more innings and bring those stats down, but as they stand, they're crummy. 89 pitches in 5.0 IP is also pretty crummy. There is a difference between crummy results and crummy pitching. On the whole, results are all that really matter, so you are right that it was a bad start. But he certainly hasn't pitched poorly. 5 Ks, 0 BBs, and 1 extra base hit. Espinosa put a nice swing on it at a bad time for Yo.

From my amateur radar reading skills it looks like most of the rain will have moved on through by right about noon or soon thereafter, with only a few scattered showers this afternoon. I'll say there is somewhere from a 1.5-3 hour delay to get the field in game shape and then it starts up. I'd be surprised if they postponed it altogether in favor of a double header when they basically have all day to play it today.

I'm not sure if Betancourt can backhand a ground ball without falling over. It looks like he was about to try for that grounder by Chipper but thought better of it to regain his balance.

Cool! Thanks for the link. I figured something like this was in the works.

Under normal circumstances this early in the season, no. When you are 0-4, need a win desperately and have a shaky bullpen, yes. He gives you the best option to win the game.

My guess is that it is a conscious decision to pitch to contact a little bit more in order to go deeper into games. I hope.

True, and yet he's not even really throwing that many strikes. Still a ton of first pitch balls, but apparently the Braves are bailing him out.

Yeah eventually but right now I think we need Morgan in RF. Is Morgan's arm strong enough for RF (I don't have any idea, I've just heard his arm is a bit weak)?He does have a weak arm. As far as skillsets go, I'd want Morgan in left, Gomez in center and Braun in right. Braun has such terrible instincts though that a switch to an unfamiliar perspective could have disastrous results, and with Hart coming back relatively soon it doesn't make much sense. Not sure why we wouldn't put Gomez in right though and have Morgan play center.

My guess is that having teams that are close geographically but in opposite leagues makes it easier for people to be fans of both teams, thus getting more TV viewers; especially later in the year when perhaps one team is out of the running and a fan can adopt their team from the other league to be their team the rest of the year. This doesn't work in the major markets like New York and Chicago where nobody is simultaneously a Mets AND Yankees fan, or a Cubs AND Sox fan, but I think it works in places like Texas and California. Wrong on the California part. I know no one here who is both a Dodger AND Angel fan or a Giant AND Athletic fan. Likewise, no one is a Dodger AND Giant fan or Dodger AND Padre fan unless you are a fan of another team outside the state. People like myself, who are Brewers fans, turn to state teams to root for once their team is eliminated but only because they do not emotionally invest themselves into these secondary teams. For example, when the Brewers were eliminated in the NLDS in 2008, I cheered like crazy for the Dodgers in the NLCS but wasn't depressed or downtrodden when they lost. Dodger fans root against the Angels, Padres and Giants when the Dodgers have been eliminated. Same for Angel and Padre fans, although there is a weird camraderie between Angel and Padre fans; probably because of their mutual Dodger hatred. Something akin to the Mets and Red Sox both hating the Yankees. This is exactly what I was thinking. Within one city (Bay area/LA) it will be similar to Chicago and New York as you say. However, Cali is a huge state with 5 teams. I wasn't assuming any of the same groups of teams that you were. I was thinking of those living in Fresno or Santa Barbara and being a Giant/Angels fan, or a Dodger/A's fan or a Padre/Angels fan. Those associations make sense to me. Similarly, in Texas I doubt anybody in Dallas cares too much about Houston, and vice versa. But what about San Antonio, Austin, etc.?

With the amount of technology available today, it seems to me that soon we should have a metric that accounts for the exact location of all defenders on the field before every pitch, the exact location on the field that a defender first touches a ball put into play, the amount of time elapsed between bat-ball contact and when the ball is fielded, and whether an out is recorded. With these 4 pieces of information I would think that an extremely reliable defensive metric could be attained for both teams as a whole and individual players. Perhaps there is one out there that I am not aware of? Thoughts?

For the anti-small ballers/ K-ing is a perfectly acceptable ways to make outs crowd, Nieves struck out twice with a guy on 3rd and 1 out today. Make contact in each situation there and we have a good chance at winning the ballgame.

Can Counsell stay in the game and play SS please? It's too obvious, isn't it?

It's not so much that we are in a drought now as it is that 1993-2007 or so was an exceptional period for power across the league at all positions....there is a reason for that. The league has been normalizing lately so that the big-boppers will basically only be at 1B and the corner OF spots, with occasional exceptions at the rest of the spots. Consequently, defense and speed and batting avg., (yes batting avg) have become more important at most positions and OBP and slugging pct. will be not quite as important as they have been.

Yes. I think this board is going to hate Roenicke in time. He certainly doesn't strike me as a numbers guy, which is bad news around here. Everything has been about feel and communication so far, which is great, but it needs to be combined with sound decision making as well.

My guess is that having teams that are close geographically but in opposite leagues makes it easier for people to be fans of both teams, thus getting more TV viewers; especially later in the year when perhaps one team is out of the running and a fan can adopt their team from the other league to be their team the rest of the year. This doesn't work in the major markets like New York and Chicago where nobody is simultaneously a Mets AND Yankees fan, or a Cubs AND Sox fan, but I think it works in places like Texas and California.

Depends on what else he's got going on at home. I know he's got that restaurant, but he probably isn't involved much in the day-to-day operations. My guess is that he loves baseball and enjoys mentoring young men in the game, with a possible coaching career in the near future. He has a history with Yost-ie; perhaps they are good friends who like hanging out. There are dozens of motivations in life besides money.

The Cubs, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati are the only traditional NL teams (pre-WWII) East of the Mississippi. The White Sox are the Westernmost traditional AL team. Seems to me that the entire American League West should join the NL and the entire NL East should join the AL. Pittsburgh could be given the option of joining the AL if they like which would make more geographical sense and keep the 16/14 ratio of teams in each league. If Pittsburgh prefer to stay in the NL, send KC or Minnesota over to the NL as well to make it 16/14. Heck, if Pitt does make the switch to the AL then send both Minnesota and KC to the NL to keep all the central time zone teams in one league (except the White Sox). So, ideally you would have 4 divisions: NL West: Seattle, Oakland, SF, LA, Anaheim, SD, Arizona and Colorado NL Central: Minnesota, Milwaukee, ChC, St. Louis, KC, Cincinnati, Texas, and Houston Old Schoool AL: Boston, NYY, ChSox, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Atlanta New School AL: Toronto, NYM, Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, Tampa Bay, and Florida All divisions would have a nice balance of power and proper proportion of large markets, all storied rivalries would remain intact (with apologies to Pittsburgh who doesn't seem to have any real traditional rivals), GREAT new rivalries would be established, and this alignment makes a lot of geographic sense/time zone sense. The winners of each division make the playoffs along with two wild card teams that could come from the same division if that's the way it worked out. I would play a heavy intra-division schedule, but a balanced schedule outside of your division so that all teams within a division have a similar strength of schedule. As far as the DH rule, I think it should be universal across both leagues for each season, but I think it should alternate each year whether it is in effect or not. That way every fan base gets to experience both styles and every team is in the same boat every year. Sure, it would give GMs headaches every off-season trying to reconfigure the roster, but it would only be the bench; and in today's game almost every team's bench i re-configured every off-season anyway. Get it done, Bud

Morgan? Weird. Is Kottaras now batting right handed or what? Way to use as many guys as possible.

I think so too. After he missed on a number of those pitches in the first he raised his arm and went through a full arm rotation like he was trying to work some physical kinks out. Combined with the "tightness" earlier this spring and him looking uncharacteristically wild I am convinced something isn't right.